Epilepsy: A Day in the Life of SianFind out what life is like when you have a condition such as Epilepsy. Follow Sian and learn how she copes with epilepsy on a day to day basis.

Living with EpilepsyWhat is epilepsy and how does it affect young people? Watch to find out how Young Epilepsy helps patients.

What Is Young Epilepsy?Learn about one of the leading charities for young people with epilepsy and how Young Epilepsy work to educate and improve the lives of its students.

What Does Young Epilepsy Do?Watch this video to find out what kind of research Young Epilepsy does and how this helps young epilepsy sufferers.

Angela Mensah, Research Co-ordinator explains what Young Epilespy does...

The Neville Childhood Epilepsy Centre comprises of: medical units, the research center and the assessment unit.

The research we do derives from basic scientific research, to patient care and educational research. At the moment, I think it is a very exciting time for research on young epilepsy. This is because not only do we have a lot research looking at the medical side of epilepsy but we also have a lot of educational research projects.

With some of the studies we’re looking at the genetics of epilepsy. We try to see if we can identify, through genetic studies, why some children get epilepsy and what are the different types of epilepsy that they can get. With other studies we are looking at the impact of anti epileptic drug load.

A lot of the students that we have, particularly on our campus here at Young Epilepsy, will be on a number of epileptic drugs. One of the studies is looking at the impact of the drug load on quality of life.

We also have studies, which are looking at the impact of epilepsy on siblings. For one of the studies we have an educational psychologist going into schools to asses the students and identify educational and behavioral problems such as children with epilepsy.

Virginia Fenton, Inclusion Project Worker

The research that I am doing is looking very much at the lived experience of being a young person with epilepsy and the meaning that young people take from their experiences. I’m going to be interviewing young people and talking to them about their experiences, and trying to build a picture of experiences within the education system.

I started at young Epilepsy about 10 years ago and I was immediately struck by the stories of the young people that I met here. They wanted their stories to be known, they wanted their stories to have a voice and I wanted to find a way that would allow them to have a voice in a way that was meaningful and in a way that was respectful to them. So my interest in research stems from that and the project that I am doing right now comes from that background and that process.

Angela Mensah

Its encouraging, shall I say, to see so much research going on at the units because what we have here is a fantastic group of experts working together. SO the more projects we have coming up, the better it is for the young people we are working with.